Terrorism and Being Terrified | Mauldin Economics

In 2013, President Barack Obama pointed out that more people are killed in the United States in car crashes than in terrorist attacks. More recently, he said that more people are killed by handguns in the United States than by terrorist attacks. Both statements are true. His intention in making these statements was to put terrorism into perspective, in order to calm the public and keep terrorism from defining our national policy. Obviously, his argument did not achieve its rational goals. Terrorism clearly frightens people more than other threats do. Some argue that people are overreacting to terrorism. However, comparisons with automobile accidents fail to capture the profound difference between the two, a difference that isn’t reflected in the simple probabilities of dying by various means. And this difference is the reason that fear of terrorism is an appropriate response.